Implications of cancelling a contract without notice

Fitness First will have to pursue the customer directly for the money owed under the contract. Typically there will be letters followed by more letters going on to debt collectors letters, court judgements and eventually baliffs if it gets that far.

If there is a valid (legal) reason why the contract should end - you need to make that argument to Fitness First.

The supplier could sue for the balance, or sell the debt to a debt collector.

Protect him/herself from what? If they don't want to be taken to court or hassled by debt collectors, they could try making an offer of a reduced sum - say, three months instead of the full six - in return for early release from the contract. They could just sit back and wait, in the hope that the supplier won't bother doing anything. They could pay the full amount or reinstate regular monthly payments. Or they could try to find some reason, which would stand up in court, which gives them the right to early termination of the contract.

Which of these is the best option depends a lot on how flexible the supplier is prepared to be, how litigious they are likely to be, and the customer's reasons for wanting to terminate the contract early.

Mark

Thanks to both of you, my questions have been answered.

with a gym the chances of that happening are near zero

tim

In other words...?

A lot of people sign up to a year's membership of a gym, often on a whim or part of a resolution to change their ways and get fit, etc, but then get fed up with it after a few months and stop going even though they've either already paid for a whole year's membership in advance or agreed to pay a full year of monthly instalments. The knowledge that this will happen allows gyms to oversell their memberships as they can be pretty sure not all their members will be active members all the time. In effect, the inactive members are subsidising the active members as their subscriptions are going towards the gym's income without them ever using the facilities. That in turn allows the gym to offer what appears to be attractive rates for new members, especially when a full year's contract is agreed to.

This business model, however, only works if all inactive members do, in fact, continue to pay their monthly subs. If a significant proportion do not, then the gym's income drops considerably and either prices have to go up for everyone else or the business fails due to being unprofitable. It is, therefore, very much in the gym's interests to ensure that non-payers are pursued for such debts, either directly by means of a small claims action in the courts or by selling the debt to a debt collector. As people wanting to terminate their membership early is a very common occurrance, the gym will have plenty of experience of this and have procedures in place to deal with it.

Mark

On a related note, I recently visited Greens Fitness (as a guest of a member) and when I enquired was told that their flexible membership minimum term was just one month! So some Gyms are clearly revising their draconian minimum membership requirements.

And how much more than a twelfth of the inflexible annual membership fee (introductory, if less), was this flexible monthly fee?